The Lost Child

by Henry Kingsley

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Genres: Classics

52 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1871

About the author

Henry Kingsley (2 January 1830 – 24 May 1876) was an English novelist, brother of the better-known Charles Kingsley. He was an early exponent of Muscular Christianity in his 1859 work The Recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn.

Kingsley was born at Barnack rectory, Northamptonshire, son of the Rev. Charles Kingsley the elder and Mary, née Lucas. Charles Kingsley came of a long line of clergymen and soldiers, and there were several writers in the family besides Henry and Charles, including Mary Kingsley, who was an explorer and writer, Charlotte Kingsely Chanter, a botanical writer and novelist, and George Kingsley, a traveller and writer.

Henry Kingsley's boyhood was spent at Clovelly and Chelsea, before attending King's College School, King's College London, and Worcester College, Oxford, which he left without graduating. An opportune legacy from a relation enabled him to leave Oxford free of debt and emigrate to Australia, arriving at Melbourne in the Gauntlet in December 1853 with Henry Venables. He became involved in gold-digging, and later joined the mounted police.

For some time Kingsley had little or no money and carried his swag from station to station. Philip Russell stated in 1887 that he employed Kingsley at his station Langa-Willi, and that Geoffry Hamlyn was begun there. Miss Rose Browne, the daughter of "Rolf Boldrewood", has stated that it was on her father's suggestion that Kingsley began to write. Russell's story is confirmed by her further statement that her father gave Kingsley a letter to Mr Mitchell of Langa-Willi station, that he stayed with Mitchell, and there wrote Geoffry Hamlyn.

On his return to the UK in 1857, Kingsley devoted himself to literature, and wrote several well-regarded novels, including Geoffry Hamlyn (1859), set in Colebrooke, Devon, and Australia, The Hillyars and the Burtons (1865), Ravenshoe (1861), and Austin Elliot (1863). Ravenshoe is generally regarded as the best. Henry Kingsley married Sarah Maria Haselwood on 19 July 1864. In 1869, he went to Edinburgh to edit the Daily Review, but he soon gave this up, and in 1870 became war correspondent for the paper during the Franco-German War.

Kingsley also published Leighton Court (1866), Mademoiselle Mathilde (1868), Tales of Old Travel re-narrated (1869), Stretton (1869), The Boy in Grey (1871), Hetty and other Stories (1871), Old Margaret (1871), Hornby Mills and other Stories (1872), Valentine (1872), The Harveys (1872), Oakshott Castle (1873), Reginald Hetherege (1874), Number Seventeen (1875), The Grange Garden (1876), Fireside Studies (Essays) (1876), The Mystery of the Island (1877).[6]

Kingsley and his wife moved to Cuckfield, Sussex late in 1874, where Kingsley died of cancer of the tongue on 24 May 1876.

Reviews

[⋆˚࿔ ky ky ۶ৎ ⋆˚✿˖° · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Mother, what country is that across the river?”

I went into this blind. This is incredibly fascinating. A tale that you can interpret in so many ways.

“Depend on it, a man never experiences such pleasure or grief after fourteen as he does before: unless in some cases in his first love-making, when the sensation is new to him.”

“And there he stood, naked and free, on the forbidden ground.”

A boy yearns to venture and his adventure leading to his death. Yet is it truly tragic as he died happy and satiated.


Whether or not to feel sad for the boy is up to you.

“There he lay, dead and stiff, one hand still grasping the flowers he had gathered on his last happy play-day, and the other laid as a pillow, between the soft cold cheek and the rough cold stone. His midsummer holiday was over, his long journey was ended. He had found out at last what lay beyond the shining river he had watched so long.”

[Laraib Zahra · Rating 5 out of 5]

His midsummer holiday was over, his long journey was ended. He had found out at last what lay beyond the shining river he had watched so long. 🤍
God, this book will be having my heart forever.

[bhoomi !! · Rating 3 out of 5]

an accurate representation of me in minecraft

[Susie Gerow · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short but I couldn't read it all, read the beginning and the end. Henry can't help it that he's not my style.